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Publisert 2 kommentarer til 10 about thorium

Friday again. Suddenly!

I got a question this week, very general, sort of, so, what's up with thorium, do you have any tips? And also if there is anything going on with thorium in Norway. 
So I decided this Friday's ten Facts had to be about thorium, so here goes:

  1. Thorium is element number 90 - which means it has 90 protons in its nucleus 🙂
  2. The kind of thorium you find in nature has 142 neutrons; so that "natural" thorium is called thorium-232 (90+142=232)
  3. In a nuclear reactor, thorium is changed (or transformed) into uranium-233 (a different kind, or version, of the more "normal" uranium-235) - and that's the reason why I'm studying that type of uranium even though I say I'm sort of working on the thorium fuel cycle 😛
  4. Thor Energy is a Norwegian company that is developing fuel pellets (nuclear fuel) made from a mixture of thorium and plutonium 😀
  5. The halflife of thorium-232 is around 14 billion years - it's the naturally occuring radioactive element with the longest halflife (if the halflife was infinite it would just be a normal, stable element 😉 )
  6. If you use thorium as a fuel in a reactor, you will produce small amounts of uranium-232, and that's kind of an issue since it makes the used thorium fuel extremely "hot" - meaning that it's very radioactive, and if you handled it the same way you handle used uranium fuel, you would get a lethal dose of radiation in a very short time
  7. The other major issue with thorium based fuels is that you have to mix it with something that will give you neutrons, since thorium needs neutrons to be changed into uranium-233, before it can fission (which is how you get any energy from the fuel in a nuclear power plant)
  8. Many people are very positive towards using thorium as a fuel in Molten Salt Reactors, but thorium can actually be used in any kind of reactor
  9. If you want to read something serious about thorium, and its use as fuel in nuclear power plants, you should read for example THIS from World Nuclear Association, or THIS from IAEA (The International Atomic Energy Agency) <3<3<3
  10. Thorium was discovered by a Swede, in Norway, and it was named after Thor - the Norse god of thunder 🙂

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Yesterday I celebrated Kathirne Aspaas' new book - Rosa er den nye pønken - where I was invited to talk about pink science. It was a short, Norwegian version of Why science should be more pink, that you can watch HERE 😉 I was quite nervous, but I really got a lot of positive feedback after my little talk, so I guess it went much better than I was fearing...
I was of course wearing my red and pink rose dress - sort of "the Dress" (yes, capital D) for me; I always feel great when i put that on. It was something I just bought on sale from Ellos around two years ago, and now I regret I didn't get three of it, because it really is my favourite dress <3

TGIF - great weekend to everyone <3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Rosa
Hei alle fine ❤️
Denne uken er busy på så mange måter... I tillegg til at det er ca fullt fokus på fisjon av uran-233/234 med Jon (min fantastiske britisk/franske veileder), så er dette er den store boklanseringsuken: i dag bærer det rett fra kontoret til lansering av flinke Vibekes Fængsruds superkjappe mattebøker, og i morgen er det Kathrine Aspaas' Rosa er den nye pønken som skal feires - da skal jeg til og med holde et miniforedrag, om rosa forskning, selvsagt 😉 Blir såååå gøy, både i dag og i morgen! ❤️
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Fikk forresten litt "kritikk" forrige uke da jeg var på God Morgen Norge, om at bloggen min jo egentlig ikke er så veldig rosa, og at det jo er fyktelig lite dagens outfit...:/ Derfor slenger jeg på en selfie for å bøte litt på skade/inntrykket (jeg vil jo ikke være en dårlig rosablogger, liksom 🙁 ):
Jeg prøvde fire forskjellige antrekk (tror jeg - litt avhengig av hvordan "antrekk" defineres...) før jeg til slutt endte opp med en gammel favoritt, som jeg rett og slett hadde glemt; en sort topp fra Indiska, med litt sånn tidlig 1900-tallsfeeling, kombinert med favorittjeansene og orange, høye hæler. Lover at jeg skal prøve å bli bedre på outfits, altså - har bare rett og slett hatt mer inspirasjon på forskningen, i det siste; og dermed mer comfy outfits (Converse ❤️❤️❤️)
Nå blir det ca fire timer med fisjonsanalyse sammen med Jon, før jeg skal plukke med meg Anders, og vi skal bevege oss mot gamle Nobilis for å feire fineste Vibeke. Omg, jeg gleder meg!

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Publisert 2 kommentarer til 4 years!!! (oh. my. god.)

I can't believe it's been four years already!
Four. Years.
Since I started blogging, about nuclear physics and research and stuff.
Four years since September 8th, 2011, when I wrote my first blog post ever; about how I was a little bit hung over, and couldn't really concentrate about making the conference talk I was supposed to be making - so I made a blog instead. I do not regret that today <3 (I don't really say that I was hung over in that first blog post, but that was the real reason why I had trouble concentrating...;))
 
When I realized that it was my fourth anniversary today, I made a decision: One year from now, exactly, I will hand in my PhD thesis. It's perfect timing, since I have funding until the end of December 2016, and it takes about three months from the thesis is handed in, until you can defend it - meaning that if all goes according to my plan, I don't have to sell everything and move out on the streets as I'm waiting for my thesis defence 😛
I've celebrated my decision/goal, by working on the analysis of fission of uranium-233. It's been a very good day, and supervisor-Jon seems quite happy and excited about the results we are seeing now... I can't tell you exactly what it is yet, but hopefully there will be a new article in a couple of months (maybe earlier???), and then I'll give you all the details of this plot, and then some more - I PROMISE <3<3<3

A million thanks to all of you who read my blog - I hope you will continue to "follow" me as I try to finish this PhD project. *kisses* 

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Obsessing…

Monday!

Meaning another week with my plot... Obsessing about my plot. Trying to make it just perfect. Try different colours. Different styles. Obsess - science style.
On Friday I was actually thinking that this is it, that I was finished with this part of the data analysis; but then, today, I realised that other people have done similar things (analysed other uranium nuclei, for example), and that they have put five of those black pumps in the plot, instead of just four - so now I'm thinking about doing the same thing. 
As you can see I've added more colours to it now; there's another, lighter pink colour, a yellow-orange'ish colour, and the uranium-235 is bright green - since someone suggested that as a colour 🙂 Maybe you have suggestions for the black bumps? They don't have to be black...;)

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Right now I'm having a glass of wine with supervisor Jon - he's here for the week, and in addition to obsessing about this plot, I've shown him where I am in the entire analyse thing. We looked at a couple of other plots too today, and he said that there's definitely a cool paper in there...:D (Of course we don't know for sure yet, but I choose to be optimistic <3 ) If you follow me on Snapchat (I'm sunnivarose, of course), you've seen the plot that Jon was so excited about.

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Publisert 1 kommentar til Fission on a Friday, part 2 (10 FACTS)
I had almost already forgot about 10 fact on a Friday, but luckily I remembered (before it was too late), so here is 10 (more) facts about fission - Fission on a Friday, part 2:
  1. in a reactor the nucleus does not split into two equally big parts - fission is not symmetric (one part/fission product is bigger/heavier than the other one)
  2. the term "fission" was borrowed from biology - binary fission, which means division at a cell into two or more parts 🙂
  3. in a fast reactor, the nucleus actually splits into two equal (or close to equal) nuclei, so fact number 1 is only true for the reactors we have today
  4. the fission products are radioactive 
  5. since the fission products are radioactive they produce heat
  6. since the fission products produce heat, the fuel in a reactor must be cooled even after a reactor is turned off (and that was the problem at Fukushima - cooling of the used fuel/fission products)
  7. fission was discovered by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in December 1938
  8. Lise Meitner was the one who really understood, theoretically, what was going on (with fission), but she was a women and a jew at a time in history when it was not the best to be both woman and jew (especially not to be jewish, maybe) - she never got the nobel price for fission, but she should have had it together with Hahn
  9. the nucleus (like uranium-233 or uranium-235 or plutonium-239, for example) fissions much more easily when they are hit by really slow neutrons - instead of fast neutrons, with a lot of energy, which is maybe what you would first think was a good idea for dividing something into two…
  10. since you get extra, free, neutrons when a nucleus fissions, you can get a chain reaction and produce energy 😀
Wish you all a really good Friday, and a great weekend <3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til kPink+7
Remember my plot from yesterday? And how happy and proud I was because I managed to make labels for the different data?
Well, today I learned (from Gry - thank you, sweetie <3) how to make it pink - and by my self I found out how to make it the exact right kind of pink. It's called kPink+7 <3<3<3, and it's just perfect, and if you think that I'm not "brave" enough to use this colour for my uranium data in a scientific article, you're wrong 😉
Yeah, and also I did the tweaking of the data points as I also talked about yesterday (I didn't spend all day on making pink data points :P)
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Speaking of pink; tomorrow I'm going to be a guest at God Morgen Norge, together with Kathrine Aspaas, who has just written a book called Rosa er den nye pønken - tune in between nine and ten (I'm guessing something like nine thirty, but I'm not 100% sure).
PS: What other kind of colours should I use in the plot?

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Data, data, and more data
Today I've spent time at the EXFOR database - hate it and sort of love it at the same time... 
So far it's the "worst" database I've visited, but so far it has also given me what I've needed *mixedfeelings*.
Then I've worked on my strength function plot, which is starting to look like something now. Tomorrow I hope to tweak it so that it will be ready for my next article 😀  #phdlife

Here are some details of today's plot:

//this may sound silly; but I was so proud of my self when I managed to make these labels (no, I do not love ROOT - yet) 😛

//shapes <3 
//this has to be fixed - the slope of the square points needs to be more in line with the two sets of triangles (task of tomorrow!)

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Publisert 1 kommentar til Trinity, Little Boy, and Fat Man
Today is the last day of August - last day of summer 2015.
This August marked the 70 year anniversary for the end of WWII, the very first atomic bomb testing, and the first (and hopefully last!) time nuclear weapons were used against humans.

 

This picture is of Trinity - the first ever test of an atomic bomb/nuclear weapon. The picture is taken around 1 hundredth of a second after detonation of the bomb. The big grey thing is actually a fireball, which is around 200 meter in diameter. Inside the pink circles are trees. Trinity was tested on July 16 1945, and it was the same kind of bomb as the one in Nagsaki (on August 9 1945) - called Fat Man - except it was a little bit smaller.
Little Boy was a uranium bomb (made of highly enriched uranium), and Fat Man was a plutonium bomb (made of plutonium that they produced from natural uranium in a reactor). Together they destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and killed around 130 000-250 000 people...
When an atomic bomb explodes, the nuclear force is released, and that is why they are so powerful - and even though it is a horrible and really scary device, it is also extremely fascinating (the nuclear force, that mostly is responsible for keeping all nuclei everywhere together, IS fascinating). Often people believe that nuclear weapons are dangerous because of radioactivity, but it is mainly the extreme explosive force, and the heat that kills people - not radiation.

 

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Last year I went to Japan to make the short film Sushi and Nuclear (Sushi og Kjernekraft). Going to Hiroshima and actually see the Atomic Bomb Dome made a very strong impression... You can see the English version of the film HERE, and the Norwegian version HERE.

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Fission on a Friday – 10 facts
It’s been a long time since I did a “10 facts” blog post (last one was about heavy water) - too long, I think, so it’s about time I do it again now 😉
I can’t promise there’ll one every week (I’ve tried those every week kind of blog posts before, and there’s always some reason - like my PhD work - why it’s difficult to see it through ), but it would have been fun if 10 facts could be like a Friday thing. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes, but today is Fission Friday; here are ten facts about fission:
  1. fission is when a (heavy) nucleus splits into two (lighter) nuclei
  2. an example of fission is when uranium-235 is hit by one neutron and becomes barium-144, krypton-90, and 2 free neutrons (same number of particles before and after fission: 1+235 = 144+90+2 = 236 :D)
  3. the light nuclei (like barium and krypton) are called fission products
  4. fission can be induced, which means that it happens because a neutron hits the nucleus (like in the picture) - a little bit like the neutron is a knife that cuts the nucleus into two pieces <3
  5. fission can be spontaneous, which means it just happens - no neutron or other particle hitting the nucleus - the nucleus just suddenly splits
  6. fission is my favourite decay mode (I think) <3<3<3
  7. a nucleus that will fission when it’s hit by a neutron is called (a) fissile (nucleus)
  8. the energy that is released in fission (when one nucleus splits) is 200 mega electron volts - which is the same as if 50 million carbon atoms burns and produces CO2 (yes, 1 versus 50 million to get the same amount of energy!)
  9. most of the energy released in fission comes from kineticc energy of the fission products - which is energy from motion of the fission products (they are moving fast away from each other)
  10. I think the energy release in fission is really really fascinating
If you think it's a good idea to do more "10 facts" blog posts, please tell me what you what you want to read about <3

Ok, I gotta run now, to catch my flight back to Oslo - since I've been giving a talk about motivation for science in Bodø today. If you follow me on Snapchat (sunnivarose), you can see the super cool LEGO rose i got after the talk (the talk was for First Lego League, so it was 100% right to get a rose made out of LEGO :D).

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Excited (and need help)

Tonight I'm super excited to tell you that I'm going to give a talk at TEDxBergen in just a little bit more than a month - 3rd of October that is!!!
The topic of the conference in Bergen this year is "The (Im)possible redefined", and they describe it like this on their web pages:

This topic addresses the human tendency of creating boundaries in our heads, which are shaped by what we know and what we can imagine. These boundaries are what we believe is "possible". This topic addresses not only the boundaries that are possible but, indirectly, impossible. With these thoughts we hope to create an inspiring TEDx event and to invite speakers that redefine the (im)possible throughout a broad variety of domains, such as science, nature, lifestyle and technology.

They asked me to be one of the speakers just the other day, so I have barely had any time to think about what I should/want to talk about this time, and I thought why don't I ask you guys for help: WHAT SHOULD I TALK ABOUT? I have some ideas already, but it would be so much fun if you had some thoughts, and/or maybe suggestions for a title - so please help! 🙂

I've talked at two other TEDx events earlier - the first one was in Oslo in 2013, and then at Institut Le Rosey (outside of Geneva) in 2014. In Oslo I gave the talk How bad is it really? Nuclear technology - facts and feelings - see it HERE, and at Le Rosey I gave the talk Why science should be more pink - see it HERE.